The highlight today in the midst of the usual work was getting together with friends of long ago. Dave Mech and Nancy Gibson, co-founders of the International Wolf Center, 
Blue Jaytogether with wolf biologist Diane Boyd of Montana met me at the Bear Center and we went to lunch. Our friendship goes back 40-50 years. Dean Cluff was with them, adding to the fun.
A section of the bio that Deb Isaacs is writing for the new exhibit about my 50 years of bear research will have a section in it about Dave and me. It reads:
Studies of bears and wolves by Lynn Rogers and Dave Mech around Ely began over a half century ago with Rogers and Mech helping each other with captures. Their radio tracking and aerial observations revealed that bears and wolves coexist peacefully most of the time. However, during a period when deer numbers were very low in the 1970’s, a radio-collared pack of nine wolves killed a radio-collared 16-year-old mother bear and her newborn cubs in a den in February 1972. Studies by these two scientists continue today as two of the longest and most intensive studies of mammals ever done. Because the well being of bears and wolves depends upon public attitudes, both of these scientists feel a responsibility to share their findings with the public. Mech founded the International Wolf Center, and Rogers founded the North American Bear Center.
It was a fun lunch with a lot of reminiscing about old times.
I’m not sure a bear visited the WRI last night. Food disappeared, but fresh snow covered tracks. Another feeding site had no bears last night. Another had two. Maybe I’ll know more in the morning.
Blue jays were eager for food on this first sunny day in awhile.
At the Bear Center, Tasha has been in her den a couple days, I’m told. This seems a little early for a bear with Kentucky genes, but we’re all still learning.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center